Scandia Links
The following links relate either to Scandia or to ImagiNations in general. Any players with suggestions or requests for links may submit them to the WebMaster to be included. Please report any broken links to the WebMaster as well.ImagiNations Links
General Scandia Links
- ImagiNations Main Page
- ImagiNations I: Vexillium (English)
- ImagiNations III: Alliance (French)
- ImagiNations IV: Germanor (Occitan/Catalan)
- ImagiNations V: Allerion (English) (inactive, now off the web)
- ImagiNations VI: Escalante (English) (inactive)
(off the web, but accessable through the Internet Archive at a 2003 version )- ImagiNations VII: Aurora (English) (new in 2003)
- ImagiNations VIII: Praelium (English) (not very active yet) (new in 2004)
- ImagiNations Chia (Portugese) (new in 2002)
Scandia-useful Tools: making web pages, hosting them, graphics, design
- Scandia eGroup
- Scandia Calendar
- Scandia eGroup Calendar - each Monday on here has a note that indicates the Scandian month that starts that earth-day. Scandian time starts each 30-day month on Monday at midnight, proceeding at 4 days per earth day on Monday through Friday, then moving at five days per earth day on Saturday and Sunday.
- Scandia Databases
Want to use nice pictures on your nations' web pages without infringing somebody's copyright? Use free stock photos from these (and more - see last item) sites. Terminology: there's 'free use', meaning it doesn't cost you. Then there's 'royalty free' meaning you don't have to pay per page view. We want both :-). Oh: do put them on your own server, don't try to directly link to them on these peoples' servers!
- 1st Page 2006 - excellent free web page editor; powerful, not wysiwyg (what you see is what you get)
- Nvu free html / php / text editor; knows css, javascript, phy syntax - wysiwyg like FrontPage.
- tsWebEditor - good free html / php / text editor; aware of css, javascript, phy syntax - not wysiwyg.
- Serif PhotoPlus - free graphics software - think "Photoshop subset" - older versions given away to get you to want their newer versions (which themselves are *excellent*, and reasonably priced, especially if you register the freebie and let them send you discount offers on the more recent versions :-) )... also at Serif's free s/w link are page creation and drawing packages. web page creation package is wysiwyg.
- Mozilla (Browser suite), Thunderbird (just email), Firebird (now 'Firefox')(just browser) - excellent open-source (free-to-use) alternatives to buggy, security-risk, bloated, inefficient big-name-brand stuff that came with your Windows(tm) operating system (Mac and Linux versions too)
- Fastmail - excellent free email provider. *Way* better than hotmail or yahoo or lots of others. More space, more bandwidth, more features all for pay, but even the pay plans are cheap. Web interface that's quick, IMAP access for your existing desktop email client.
- FileZilla - great free FTP package for transferring files to and from your web server
- Typeoasis - if you're generating graphics and want something other than the dozen or two fonts that came with your computer, it can be a royal hassle to find good ones (for free). There's a zillion font sites, and 99.97% are just links to other font sites, with sixteen ads popping up every time you click. Yuk. TypeOasis has a good selection, easily downloaded, with examples of each clearly visible. Well organized. Free. TrueType.
- Themeworld Fonts - comprehensive archive - you'll have to wade through a lot of choices, but there's a lot that are worth the download time. Win & Mac both, free.
- Dr. Berlin's Foreign Font Archive - language-specific fonts. Free. TrueType.
- FontPage - free font manager... if you've downloaded hundreds of fonts, you MAY not want to keep all of them actively installed at the same time. That can bog down every document you open - FontPage is on way to easily install and uninstall just what you want. Also provides a preview of the fonts' differences better than the opersting system's way.
- Bravenet - free (and paid; others are better/cheaper than their paid plans) webspace provider - banner ads, but no popups. Lots of web related resources; a pretty good set of fonts, javascripts, tutorials. Note that's no popups *for people viewing your site*... there's still some popups *you* will have to put up with. Free sites use slightly clunky web-based file upload; workable, just not as fast or smooth as ftp. You can pay to remove ads.
- Brinkster - free (and paid) web host - banner ads, but no popups. Pretty reliable - hosts the Scandia main site, and some nations' sites. Note the banner was conflicting with some pages of the Scandia site, so I moved most of that content to an f2o account. Ad removal for a small monthly fee. Slightly clunky uploads for free plan - real FTP on most paid plans.
- freedom2operate - web development community - sometimes offers free hosting accounts; join forum and learn about various web technologies, 'pay' for space by participating; apply for free site w/ request saying why they should give you one :-). They're the only free host I've seen with things like mySQL and PHP; a desire to learn about those may be sufficient rationale for joining. The support forums are a good learning tool even if you don't host a site there.
- Geocities, Angelfire, Tripod - anybody with something good to say about these free webspace providers, let me know and I'll quote you. Ads on your site pay for the free hosting.
- freewebspace.net - analysis of free webspace providers
- 4layouts.com - free web page templates - web pages aren't that hard to write from the ground up, but if you want something to go by, there's a zillion providers of templates - prefab pages that you modify to suit your content. This is just one provider of many; download freebies and (nicer looking/working) paid ones.
- w3c.org - web standards group - their various validators can help you find problems with your web page code. Just because it passes a validator doesn't mean you've got a good useable site, and just because something fails a validator doesn't always mean it's unuseable...
- w3 schools - web stuff tutorials
- web design group - html and related reference
- webmonkey - all kinds of web design reference and tutorials
- Visibone color lab - quick "how does *this* color look next to *this* color, with *this* color font..." also more color info than you can shake a stick at, plus html references
- xara 3D sample - 3-dimensional text heading generator
- Page Resource - web design references and tutorials
- Web Developer forums - getting answers for that elusive problem
- yucca's info - character codes, copyright, a few other useful info articles
- web photos that pop - photo optimization for web display
- cooltext.com - nice text logo & button generator, when it works
- Web Page Design for Designers - make them look good and work well
- Research Based Web Useability - government-generated guide to making web pages useable
- Bobby - website accessability analysis
- TRK Webhosting - lessons - hosting outfit with good tutorial material
- WebSiteOptimization - see how your pages stack up - an aid to helping the rest of us use & enjoy your nations' pages
- the Internet Archive - have a url whose page no longer exists? they may have a copy of that page archived via their 'Wayback Machine'
These next three are useful to tune your web pages or your file attachments, if you like to send pictures with posts on the email list. Some folks can't handle getting big attachments very well, and making pictures smaller (in filesize) helps your pages load quicker. I'ts somewhat rude to send multi-hundred-kilobyte or larger attachments out to people who don't know they're coming. Jpeg is the usual file compression format for photo-type pictures, and it does a good job. You can select the amount of compression, and the default you get from wherever-you-got-the-picture or however-you-generated-the-picture is often unnecessarily large. More compression loses picture quality, but we don't need TV-broadcast-quality rendition; often a *big* file size savings can be had for a tradeoff of not-very-degraded appearance. All three of these can fix you up; the more complicated ones better/ slicker/ more flexible, but I've tested all and they work fine.
- Stock Xchng - recommendation by a player: "You have to register to be able to download the pics, but its free, and you have to obey the restrictions the photographers place on the images, but that's usually not a problem since we aren't making commercial sites."
- Public Domain Photos - similar; good pix, free for our kind of use
- Library of Congress - historical photo online catalog
- US Government Graphics and Photos - links into various agencies' sites
- Freeimages - good pix, free for our kind of use
- Free Stock Photos - similar; good pix, free for our kind of use
- more Free Stock Photos - similar; good pix, free for our kind of use
- istockphoto.com - community of designers & photographers - if you can upload some for their *huge* collection, you earn credit toward being able to *download* later. If you just waltz in and download without contributing, there's a nominal fee. Did I say *biiiig* collection?
- morguefile - contributions encouraged, but pix use free in any case
- BigPhoto - hundreds, not thousands, but nice shots
- Stock Stash - broad collection, free use, they just ask for attribution
- Freefoto.com - big free-for-noncommercial-use pix archive. With all these do look at their conditions of use - some ask you to credit them or include a link to them somewhere on your page. If they're giving me pix I don't even have to steal, seems attribution is the least I can do :-).
- Geek Philosopher - modest collection of (nice!) free photos; the jewel here is the many links to *other* free photo sites - see the 'More Free Sites' button.
Scandia-useful references -- designing a culture
- JpegCompress - simple, just jpeg compression tweaker
- Interactive JPEG optimizer - more complex, though still easy to use - can set a lot of other parameters besides the compression level, and convert to other formats as well
- Ignite - full-featured, lots of control, thus harder to learn. Worth it for me! ... free "almost" ... asks for registration, asks for contribution if you use it regularly
- NEW Scientist web links -
- Martindale's "The Reference Desk" -
- refdesk -
- WWF ecoregions -
- tiny flags -
- Flags of the World -
- CIA World Factbook -
- yourdictionary.com - multilingual dictionaries
- global history of currencies -
- banknotes.com - pix of worldwide bank notes
- commodity price datasheet -
- names by nation/ language/ ethnic group - ...with far more meaning than *I* place on the name itself :-)
- names for people, by nationality - even Nahuatl, Andrew! :-)
- more names by nationality -
- Constructed languages - make your own - link farm
- Nation creation from the angle of... postage stamps - Includes graphics s/w recommendations
- artistamps - if that first was not enough mail art / artistamps (it is just one artist) there's this page of mail art links - ... here just because SOME of us like to create even postage stamps, and it's fun seeing what others do!
- send some suggestions